Bill Lange & Dave Gallo: Deep Sea Explorers

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution rolled tape on some amazing underwater imagery filmed by robots and high-tech cameras. The Institute also films using air ships to monitor (without disturbing) marine animals.

The purpose of their presentation is to share with us the idea that the world, made up mostly of water, is not an empty oasis – there are lifeforms we’d expect to find in alien planets that exist in our deep seas. We see fish living in an ocean made of sulfur, 200 degree F.

What’s the message? Life on this planet wants to happen.
Where we expect to find no life at all we’re finding thriving communities, not living off the sun’s energy but from the ecosystem of the ocean.

These scientists are finding terms of diversity and density that rivals the rain forest.

Using technology, where we once left shipwrecked souls to live underwater in eternity, now no shipwrecks are beyond our reach. We can go to the deepest depths – find sunken war tanks, oil ships – and these ships are now being explored, and the truths of their histories uncovered.

Most of this planet, blanketed with water is a totally different world than what we know on land. All these micro-ecosystems prove that we can find life where we never thought we’d find life before.

Consider the implications for us when we consider what lifeforms might exist on other planets.